by Kate Griffin
The world went blue.
Beautiful, electric blue. Blue blood dribbling down our fingers, blueness blazing across our eyes, blue fire spilling from our hands, blue fury in our veins, blood blue inside and out, soul blue electric rage, we are the angels, we be light, fire, life, freedom, fury . . .
and all I knew was
set our blood on fire!
he wasn’t scared
not even of us
but then, that hadn’t been the point.
We turned our hands down towards the floor of writhing wires and spitting cables, burst up from the carpet and the concrete, and turned the fury of our fire downwards, shook our fingertips until that single drop of blood that had wormed out of the paper-thin cut on our flesh shook itself free and fell.
When it hit the floor, it went boom.
And for a moment, even Mr Pinner looked surprised.
The floor buckled. It creaked, it twisted, it bent, it sagged. The cracks ran across it, up the walls, and crawled into the edges of the ceiling.
Then the floor collapsed.
It went out beneath me, beneath Oda, and beneath Kemsley. We tumbled in dust and shattered cable that flopped like dead creepers from the hole of our passage, spilt like so much old flour in a torn sack down into the floor below. I bounced, head hitting the lower end of a sofa, feet knocking over a coffee table — we had fallen into someone’s living room. Oda landed on her feet, like a cat, rolled and rose in a movement, twisting away from the radiator against the wall and coming up by a small shelf of cheesy books. Kemsley fell where he had fallen above, a limp bloody sack in the hall towards the door. I rolled to my front, then crawled to my feet. Nothing felt broken but that meant nothing, we were on fire, blazing inside with fury and terror and stolen electricity snatched from the wire, pain wasn’t going to get a look-in until it was too late to care, so we didn’t care, staggered forwards, tried to pick Kemsley up and found his sleeve saturated with blood that slipped from our fingers. “Oda!” we screamed. “Help us!”
She was forward in an instant, ducking her head under one arm and lifting him bodily, crouching and rising like a weight-lifter at the gym to get the man to his feet. His face was a nothing, an acid burn from which strips of loose whiteness dangled, but his breath still came, even as the hair fell from his head, the roots torn loose by the laceration his skull had received. I heaved open the front door, ran onto the balcony — no spectres, not yet — ran to the end, snatching electricity from the walls around me until our skin was bright white lightning and our hair stood on end, saw the stairwell by the faint neon glow clutched to my hand, heard above,
De de de de de de de de de
And maybe:
Kaboom kaboom kakakaboom kaboom kaboom . . .
Even Oda, superhuman, subhuman, inhuman, utterly human — didn’t know, didn’t care — even Oda was struggling with the dead weight of Kemsley. I took his other arm, slipped it over the back of my neck, dragged him into the stairwell and downstairs, staggering and stumbling in the faint glow of neon by which we ran. Ground floor; courtyard, the courtyard where Nair had died, smog, so thick that two steps were two too many and now behind was nothing more than a vague recollection lost of all geographical meaning, and “out” was a naive illusion from brighter times. I felt in my pocket, found Nair’s phone, shrieked at Oda, “Road! Get to a road!” and she chose a direction; faith, random, someone had to choose.
So we staggered/ran/fell in our bubble of stolen pinkish-orange light, could have been at sea, could have been alone in the world, no way to tell, just silence and perhaps:
Chachachachabang chachachachabang . . .
De de de de de de de . . .
Kakakaboom kaboom kaboom kakaka . . .
Nair’s phone took all of time and much of space to warm up; then did; I found the phone book, I flicked through; a number, a long shot, but still a number. It was labelled Black Cab and nothing more, no company, no nothing, and that was why it was a shot fired in the dark. I called it, our staggering in the smog had found a wall, not an exit, Oda pressed us to it as she directed our course and used it as a guide, coughing and choking as we staggered through the dark.
A voice on the other end of the phone said, “Black Cab, how may I help you?”
“I need a ride!” I whispered it, but the words came out an old man’s wheeze through the scarf across my nose and mouth.
“From where to where?”
“Raleigh Court, Kilburn, to anywhere safe!”
“What time do you require collecting?”
“As soon as possible!”
“Very well, sir, please make your way to Raleigh Road and a cab will be there to collect you in the next few minutes . . .”
I hung up, Oda had found dustbins, dustbins rang a bell, it was near where I’d found my Mr Fox. I hissed, “This way!” and dragged her by the weighty bridge of Kemsley in the way I thought I remembered the road. A few steps on, and Oda trod on something and hissed. I looked at it. A trooper, one of the Aldermen’s, lay on the pavement in front of us, a penknife stuck calmly through the wrinkled pipe of his throat.
“Quiet!” I whispered. “Quiet!”
We stopped, and listened.
De de de de de de de de de . . .
“Where is he?” hissed Oda.
“Don’t know. Shush!”
Kakakaboom kakakaboom kakakaboom . . .
“Sorcerer . . .”
Fear, not question, reassurance, not answers. She could probably have done with answers, but knew better than to think I’d have any going spare.
I curled my fingers tighter around our neon bubble, let it become nothing more than a tiny flame between my clutching fingertips. “This way,” I whispered. We staggered forwards at an old man’s totter, each step the one before the last that ruptures that ageing artery, this one, maybe this one, maybe now . . . so we kept moving, counting maybes, no sound except the tiny whisper of a bass beat in a pair of headphones and our own gigantic shuffling steps.
When we reached the pavement of the road, I nearly tripped on it, feet staggering into a gutter full of foul, blocked and rotting leaf-mould-rain. I hissed, “Here!” and Oda stopped too.
“What now?” she asked.
“Shush! Listen!”
We listened. There was a faint wind now, blowing in from the edges of the smog, promising, somewhere, a slightly fresher air. It blew something else. I looked down at my feet. A small piece of paper had blown up from the gutter and tangled round my ankle. I half-bent down to pick it up. It was a piece of newspaper, torn at the corner. It said:
SHOCKER IN
CHERYL SAYS
utrageous party pranks have led
commented to said that she wo
me back my
of the
en
I looked up.
The only light was coming from my fingertips. It seeped upwards over a foot, no more, from where I stood, before becoming lost in the smog. I should have been able to feel his breath, had he lungs to breathe. I felt his toes brush mine; hard leather toes pressing down on the soft space of my too-big shoes, where my toes should have been. Mr Pinner smiled. We screamed, “Oda, ru—”
His hand came up. It was holding something bright and shiny, which stabbed down towards our eye. We caught his hand, wrapped our fingers around his sleeve and let the neon blaze, let it burn from inside us and screamed again, “Oda, run, get to the end of the—”
His other hand came up and pushed into our throat, pressing our chin back and taking the rest of us with it, and now we could see what was in his raised hand. It was a fountain pen, titanium-gold, hinting at all the shiniest colours of the silvery rainbow as he brought it down towards us, the end stained slightly with black ink. Even ignoring what he was, what he might be, the threat of that stuck through our eye filled us with enough terror to lend us strength, and we let the electricity blaze across us. It should have killed him, would have killed a man, set his hair on fire, but it just flickered har
mlessly over his flesh and down to earth, didn’t even singe his suit, and we could hear Oda staggering down the street and see the nib growing bigger and bigger, filling the left-hand side of our world.
The phone in my pocket started to ring. I screamed, “Oda, get to the cab, get to the . . .”
An engine started at the end of the road, I saw a light, a bright orange-yellow light, letters lost somewhere in the smog. “Oda! Oda, get to the—”
Mr Pinner’s fingers tightened around our windpipe, pushing down on the thick muscles, and his eyes were our universe and he murmured, “What are you, blue-blood?”
The orange light grew closer. I could hear the rattle of a great, old engine, that would one day shake itself apart in a shower of bolts and blackened iron, and run without a hitch until that happened. We looked him in the eye and replied, “We are Swift, and I am the angels!”
I let go of his wrist. I let his fingers push back on my throat, I tumbled head-over-heels, flopped back like someone had replaced my bones with jelly and caught him off-balance, threw his entire weight forwards as I went back and kicked and jammed my elbows together as we fell, tried to push my bottom into the pavement as being my least delicate part, landed badly, felt my leg twist beneath me and rolled, heaving him to one side and pushing him away. His fingers fell from my neck and I crawled up, my fingers tangling in his suit, which didn’t tear. It didn’t come away from his flesh, didn’t reveal the shirt beneath, but stayed fused to him, as if a very part of his body and skin. No time, not now, not now . . .
We staggered back onto our feet and ran, waiting for the pain of a thousand paper cuts, ran towards the yellow light, saw Oda already by its source, pushing the bloody Kemsley into the back of the cab, and there it was, TAXI in large letters against the light and it was big and black and curved and belched black smoke from its rear and shuddered on its rickety suspension and it was a black cab, no, not enough: it was the Black Cab, its skin so black it stood out deeper against the darkness; its windows so fouled over with dirt and unwashed filthy rain that you couldn’t see inside, its wheels spitting smoke, its engine roaring like a caged animal. Oda was already halfway inside. I tumbled in after her and shouted at the driver, “Out of here! Go!”
He put his foot to the accelerator.
We went.
There are stories. Some of them, unlike most, are true.
Stories of . . .
A train that goes round and round forever on the Circle Line, will go for ever, will never stop, never rest, never take on a new passenger except for those who know the secrets of the Last Train and when it runs.
The Night Bus, which collects the spirits of the dead who died sleeping and alone in the dark.
Lady Neon, whose eyes are too bright for any mortal to look on without being driven mad.
The Black Cab, which can go anywhere, whose driver has heard of Isaac Newton and thinks he missed a few points, and which will always charge a fare. Usually, a very high fare.
Something to worry about at a later point, we decided.
One problem at a time.
Oda said, “He’s not dead.”
Kemsley lay on the floor of the cab. The driver’s voice drifted in from the intercom, his face lost somewhere in the murky darkness behind the glass shutter. “If he bleeds on my floor, you’ve got to pay for cleaning.”
I said, “Strap him to something.”
She scowled but, grunting and groaning, heaved him into one of the fold-down seats on the backwards-facing side of the cab, and strapped him in. I buckled myself into the seat behind the driver, and added, “Now strap yourself in.” The belt felt hard across my chest, stiff, and a little bit too slippery.
“Why?”
I pointed at a sign. It said, “Passengers Must Wear Seat Belts At All Times”.
“Is this . . .”
“Do it.”
She looked at us, saw through the dirt and grime and knew better than to argue. She strapped herself in. Kemsley was something from the butcher’s yard that had been left out in the rain and the sun for too many weeks, and by this process acquired a twisted mimicry of life. The driver said, “So where can I take you?”
His voice was a muffled crackle over the intercom, the red LED on the door a little bit too bright, the windows between us and him a little too dark. All I could see was smog in the bright headlights of the cab. I leant forward and said, “The City. Corporation of London. The Thames.”
“That’s three places.”
“Are we caring if the Alderman dies?” asked Oda carefully.
I looked at her, saw a face hacked by stone out of an iceberg, looked at Kemsley. It occurred to us, for a moment, that we didn’t care. Not our problem. I said, “Damn. Damn damn damn. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital for Women, Euston Road.”
“Righto.”
I could see the red lights of the tariff metre in the front of the cab. They were clocking up numbers and letters as we drove, but not by any mathematics I knew.
“You want to go to an abandoned hospital?” asked Oda. She was getting her breath back, wiping dirt from her eyes with hands dirtier than her face: instinct, not practicality.
We turned sharply to her. “If the Order raids it, when this is done, if they attack the hospital, if they dare go after the healers, we swear, we swear we will bring you and them down.”
She just smiled. “Right,” she said. “More magic.”
“Sure, because black cabs just happen to drive into magical war zones on a regular basis,” I snapped.
“I am serene, am I not?”
“Getting used to it?”
Her face darkened, but she said nothing. The head of our driver was just a black outline peeking out from behind the slab of his headrest, lit up only by the reflected glow of his headlights and the dull red illumination from the tariff metre. I looked across at Oda and said, “You carry much cash?”
“No. Why?”
“Cab rides are always expensive.”
Especially this one.
“You’re worried about the fare?”
“I thought you’d be pleased with me. A good, noble, avoiding-whichever-sin-it-is sentiment.”
“He sees your heart, not your smile,” she intoned.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that twenty quid slipped to a cabby can’t redeem your soul.”
“That’s a ‘no’ on the fare, then?”
“Yes, that’s a no.”
“Fine.” I turned away, and our eyes passed over Kemsley. He was leaning forward against his seat belt and wheezing. I could see the veins pumping through the remnants of the skin on his neck, jerking in and out like some obscene production line in a food factory, filling with thick blue blood and then deflating to a bruised tube among the ruined mess of his skin. We looked away. Outside, the smog seemed to be lifting, streetlights flashing between the sickly mist, reflected orange stains moving from back to front across the ceiling of the cab, too fast and too erratic to pick out any shapes or shadows. I thought about Anissina. I slipped my hand into my jacket pocket for Nair’s phone, thumbed through the address file, found her right near the top, dialled.
“Who are you—” began Oda.
“Anissina.”
“Why?”
“She might still be lost.”
“We can’t do anything for her, even if it should be done,” replied Oda primly. “She falls or she fights. That’s how it is.”
A phone rang on the other end of the line, and kept on ringing. There was no reply. It went to answerphone. We hung up. We knew better than to leave our voice floating as electricity in the wire. Outside the window, the smog was almost entirely gone, just a few loose traceries being washed away by falling rain, that slipped sideways like tiny transparent snakes across the taxi’s window. I could see flashes of houses, but that’s all they were — shadows that came and went in some impossible, too-far-off distance, perspective playing tricks, architecture playing tricks as terraced house
melted into flashy apartment melted into rickety shed melted into bungalow. It gave us a headache to look at it, would have set an epileptic screaming. Oda had noticed too, a warning was in her voice: “Sorcerer?”
“Don’t look too hard.”
“What is this?”
“It’s the Black Cab. It goes anywhere.”
“Does it take the North Circular?”
“Oda! That almost sounded like desert-dry humour.”
“It wasn’t.”
“It doesn’t take the North Circular. If Einstein had seen how the Black Cab moved, he’d have given up physics and gone back to playing the trombone.”
“Einstein played the trombone?”
“I don’t know. But it would fit the hairstyle.”
I had the sense we were picking up speed. I risked glancing out of the window. Signs drifted by, seemed to hang in gloomy nothing, pointing at nothing, suspended in nothing, just floating by in the darkness outside, lit up by no source I could see. The road was nothing but a black shimmer beneath us, defined only by the painted-on markings that lit up blinding yellow and white as we skimmed over them. In the distance, I could see neon signs drifting by like a lit-up ship far out to sea, promising plays, shopping, films, long hours and cheap prices. A billboard drifted by too slow for the speed our wheels were spinning at, the long eyelashes of a perfume-soaked model blinking at us from the pale paper; a single pedestrian, hat drawn down across his eyes, every inch of him as dark as shadow, without variety in texture or tone, vanished round an unseen corner, not once looking up. We felt suddenly tired, sad and alone. A blazing billboard advertised a car whose engine revved inside the hoarding’s plywood frame; it floated up overhead, drifted above the roof of the taxi and set down on the other side. A great fat rat, larger than any urban fox, looked up from where it was chewing a grey-green soaking hamburger, and blinked a pair of bright red eyes at us as we drove by. A short road of bright pink streetlamps flashed, came, went; a lorry, as tall as a house, driver lost in the soot-black, burnt-black darkness of his roaring vehicle, streaked by outside, horn blazing: a sheet of spray containing more than its fair share of goldfish and flapping river eels slapped over the cab. A pair of headlights flashed for a second, then vanished; a pair of pulsing yellow bulbs declared a zebra crossing, on which a zebra grazed, its skin carved from curved aluminium, its legs glued together out of old toilet rolls. It chewed on spilt chicken tikka with a patient gnaw and watched us as we sped on.
